Wszolek T.

Acoustic signal from corona is usually the first symptom of line damages noticed during routine line inspection service. The goal of the study undertaken by the authors is the utilization of the corona process, because if it is impossible to avoid it one should at least try to take some advantages from that fact. One of possible practical benefits of the corona process is the possibility to evaluate the technical condition of some line elements using the acoustic signal of the corona process. The corona audible signal can be easily recorded and its analysis, making use of the contemporary signal processing techniques and artificial intelligence methods, may be the source of information concerning the line damages, which are very difficult to detect and assess by other methods. The essence of the problem is the fact that useful information about the forms and locations of the UHV line damages is hidden in the structure of the analyzed signal and has to be extracted, in which process the artificial intelligence techniques applied by the authors can be very helpful. As has been shown in previous papers some distinctive features of such phenomena can be extracted in laboratory but in real world conditions, where the line damages are not so frequent and their sources much less obvious, there may be some problems with collecting a properly representative learning set. An additional obstacle is usually higher and more involved character of background noise in reality. The paper contains some results gathered in real world conditions and their application in the diagnosis of the conductor technical conditions in UHV power lines.